Setting

The region consisting of the three continents of Valendia, Ordalia, and Kerwon, blessed throughout with verdant natural landscapes and climatic conditions supporting a great variety of life. Regional climate trends are thought to be determined largely by the density of Mist present in the air, though this correlation is as yet not well understood. Many humanoids call Ivalice home, each belonging to a distinct cultural sphere. By far, most prevalent of these are the humes, and it is around the civilization that affairs throughout the rest of the world revolve.

Ivalice, Sage Knowledge 29

Ivalice is basically Final Fantasy’s take on medieval Europe with magic. The influence of European fantasy is present in many games in the series, starting with the original Final Fantasy, but what sets the Ivalice games apart is its focus on political drama and wars between multiple nations. I bring up Europe as a reference because Ivalice isn’t the name of the entire world these games are based on (like, for example, FFX’s Spira or FFXIII’s Pulse), but rather a region of the planet. We only ever get pieces of the map in the various games, but the point here is that Ivalice is just the name for the setting in which these games occur.

A couple notes: Ivalice first appeared in Final Fantasy Tactics, which actually takes placemany years after Final Fantasy XII. While the two games are confirmed to be in the same universe and share some of the same concepts, this site only discusses FFXII. There are only a couple of references to FFT’s history in FFXII, and a lot of things are different in the later game.

FFXII took a lot of influence from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, as well, but FFTA’s Ivalice isn’t the same as the ones appearing in FFT and FFXII — the one in FFTA is just a fantasy world that came to life.

Ready to learn more about Ivalice? Head over to the Empires & Kingdoms section to find out about the different regions of the land, or head over to the Races section to find out about more about the many different beings who live in Ivalice.